Owner

Current status

gnome-software has been introduced in F20, and it offers application installation, browsing, search and update viewing and installation.
In F20, gnome-software is using yum via PackageKit. The metadata for applications, as well as extra data for featured applications is shipped as
part of the gnome-software package.

Detailed Description

gnome-software will support installing system add-ons such as fonts and codecs. It will show additional metadata for applications: screenshots, ratings, other details. We will also work with the Fedora infrastructure team to obtain the metadata online for all applications instead of shipping
it statically for a limited set.

The metadata for application needs to be expanded and its quality monitored. Screenshots need to be taken or updated.

The update monitoring and downloading functionality will be moved from the gnome-settings-daemon updates plugin into gnome-software. To implement this, gnome-software will be turned into a session service, and the updates plugin will be removed from gnome-settings-daemon.

Benefit to Fedora

Fedora gets an improved application installation experience. Having a proper way to present available applications to users will open the door to making more rational decisions about what needs to be included in the spin, and what can be presented as a featured application in the installer.

The hawkey stack gets early testing exposure.

Scope

Proposal owners:

Add add-on support (DONE)

Display additional metadata in details page (DONE)

Implement a GNOME shell search provider (DONE)

Turn gnome-software into a session service and take over updates plugin functionality (DONE)

Extract metadata and icons when building packages in koji rel-eng ticket

Make metadata available for packaged applications in Fedora

Make application icons available

Make application screenshots available

Make it possible to create Fedora accounts from the client-side

Allow storing small amount of per-user data for users with a Fedora account

Application packagers

Add application metadata to their packages, ideally sending it upstream

Marketing, documentation

Assist with review and quality control of application metadata

Assist with selecting featured applications

Policies and guidelines:

We want to use the hawkey backend in PackageKit while the default commandline utility is still yum; this kind of separation was rejected by Fesco in the past for zif, will need to ask again (DONE, approved conditionally)

The packaging guidelines for applications should be updated to require application metadata in addition to a desktop file

The update experience will also benefit from proposed changes to batch updates, but batched updates are not a strict requirement for the new app installer

Upgrade/compatibility impact

The gnome-settings-daemon update plugin had cdoe to notify users about available OS upgrades. We have not yet decided if gnome-software should
provide similar functionality.